Stacia Gilliard-Matthews’s research while affiliated with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and other places

The digital neighborhood is the amalgamation of the spaces online where youth connect with others. Just as Black and Hispanic youth live in neighborhoods that influence their health, they are also influenced by online digital neighborhoods. Youth are exposed to social media content featuring substance use, sexual risk, and violence, yet little is known about the extent to which youth engage with such content. Using a modified venue sampling strategy, we administered CASI surveys to 145 Black and Hispanic youth aged 13–24 living in low-income urban neighborhoods. Across social media platforms, respondents reported high levels of exposure to sexual, alcohol, drug, and violence-related content (65–84%). Users reported lower levels of engagement with risk-related content (on an engagement continuum), ranging from passive exposure to dissemination. While negative risks may be amplified in the digital neighborhood, youth appear to strategically limit their engagement with that content. However, because risk behavior messaging is common in these digital neighborhoods, these spaces provide opportunities for health promotion interventions.

Background: Sexual health is an important area of study-particularly for minority youth and youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Objectives: The purpose of the research was to examine the sources of sexual health information associated with youth adopting sexual risk reduction behaviors. Methods: Data collection took place in a small city in the Northeastern United States using cross-sectional behavioral surveys and modified venue-based sampling. Participants included 249 African American and Latino youth aged 13-24. Participants reported their sources of information about contraception and human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted disease, such as TV/movies, parents, social media; their intentions to have sex; and condom and contraception use during their last sexual activity. Social media use, past pregnancy experience, past sexual history, age, and gender were also measured. Standard tests of bivariate association (chi-square and F tests) were used to examine initial associations between sexual risk reduction behavior and exposure to sexual risk reduction information on social media. Logistic regression models were used to test multivariate relationships between information sources and sexual risk reduction behavior. Results: Youth who were exposed to sexual health messages on social media were 2.69 times (p < .05) and 2.49 times (p < .08) more likely to have used contraception or a condom at last intercourse, respectively. Parents, schools, or traditional media as information sources were not significantly associated with contractive use or condom use at last intercourse. Discussion: Youth sexual behavior is increasingly informed by social media messages. Health practitioners should utilize social media as an important health promotion tool.

This study examines the role of social media in the lives of youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Feminist Standpoint Theory, which privileges the voices of marginalized communities in understanding social phenomena, suggests that youth at the margins have specific knowledge that helps us understand social media more broadly. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 females and 30 males aged 13–24 years about their social worlds and neighborhoods, both online and offline. The findings reveal a dynamic and somewhat concerning interplay between the geographic neighborhood and the digital neighborhood, whereby negative social interactions in the geographic neighborhood are reproduced and amplified on social media.

Do the intersections between officer race and driver race/ethnicity influence the frequency in citizens’ reports of receiving a traffic ticket during a routine traffic stop in 1999 and 2008? To fully grasp the importance of traffic ticket outcomes, we must first understand how extralegal factors, particularly the intersections between officer race–driver race/ethnicity and the number of vehicle occupants, impact these outcomes. Thus, the current study utilizes the 1999 and 2008 Police–Public Contact Survey to assess the relationship between extralegal factors and traffic ticket receipt during routine traffic stops. Findings illustrate that according to citizens’ reports, extralegal factors, including the intersections between officer race–driver race/ethnicity and the number of vehicle occupants, differentially impact traffic ticket receipt in both the years.

The current study utilizes an asset-based approach to examine inner-city African-American and Latino adolescent non-marijuana use. Interview findings suggest that the common theme in adolescent narratives is why they avoid marijuana use. Specifically, adolescents formulate several reasons situated in their perceptions of self, peers, and parents to avoid marijuana use. Drawing on resiliency theory and to broaden our scope of inquiry, we utilize these findings to further delve into the relationship between perceptions of self, peer communication, parental monitoring, and marijuana use avoidance utilizing survey data analysis. Findings can be used to leverage prevention programs with this population.

This article explores the conditions and assumptions under which it is possible to use National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in lifetime crime computations, particularly for nonfatal violent crimes. We describe methods for using NIBRS to study lifetime risk for a variety of crimes and show how researchers and policy makers can apply these methods using readily available software such as Microsoft Excel. Finally, we demonstrate in two different studies how NIBRS can be used to estimate lifetime risk at the state and national levels. In doing so, we introduce the concept of the ''average person'' in each age–sex–race grouping to calculate the risk of victimization for this hypothetical person only.

Objectives To examine how girls and young women living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods make decisions relating to sexual debut and HIV prevention.DesignThirty semistructured in-depth interviews. We used a socioecological approach to investigate the role of neighborhood and social context on sexual decision making.SettingCommunity-based organizations and on-campus interview sites.ParticipantsAfrican American and Latina girls and young women age 13 to 24 living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.Methods We examine their attitudes and beliefs about sex, first opportunities for sexual intercourse, prevention behaviors, and neighborhood environments.ResultsLack of neighborhood safety and safe socialization places led youth to spend significant amounts of time indoors, often without adult supervision.Conclusion The findings provide insight into the socioecological context in which girls are situated as they navigate sexual decision making. Unsupervised, cloistered time coupled with peer norms to engage in sexual behavior may contribute to increased risky sexual behavior among some youth. Prevention efforts should consider neighborhood context and incorporate structural and community-level interventions to create social environments that support healthy sexual decision making.

Current research has affirmed that black women are most at risk for rape, assault, and intimate partner violence in the United States. These findings are often based on statistics from surveys like the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS collects data from a stratified sample of households in the United States from which one can establish victimization risk and rates at the national level. We know very little about a person's risk of violent crime victimization from police records at the local and state level because until recently the data were not available. This study, therefore, adds to current victimization research by utilizing state-level police data to examine violent crime victimization patterns. Specifically, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and West Virginia Incident-Based Reporting System (WVIBRS), we construct a model to examine the risk of nonsexual and sexual victimization over a lifetime by sex and race. Our findings indicate that black females in West Virginia have the highest probability of experiencing a nonsexual and sexual victimization over their lifetime. They also have the highest risk of multiple victimizations for these crimes.

On the surface, groups advocating white supremacy appear similar. However, upon closer examination these groups vary in their strategies and goals as well as how they are affected by the economic downturn, immigrants, and political representation. This study utilizes resource mobilization theory to examine the relationship among political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and white supremacist group organization in the United States between 2000 and 2007. With the fifty states as the unit of analysis, I conduct a pooled time-series analysis to answer the following research questions: Is there a relationship among a state's political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and individual white supremacist group organization? Does this relationship vary by white supremacist group type? White supremacist group data disaggregated by type reveal that group dynamics are in play as groups navigate state political and social factors to determine ideal areas to organize. This study reveals the importance in examining white supremacist groups disaggregated by type, particularly the political and social factors that motivate their level of organization.

This study drew on social construction of gender and reflexive methodological approaches to examine how adolescent girls procured meth within the context of relationships with boys and men. A total of 18 incarcerated adolescent girls, aged 14 to 17 years, were interviewed about their meth-using experiences. The findings indicate that girls used five relationship strategies and one nonrelationship strategy to procure meth on the streets. Close examination revealed that girls' meth procurement strategies, with few exceptions, occurred in ways resonant with culturally dominant views of femininity (referred to hereafter as emphasized femininities). However, most girls presented themselves in interviews as breaking out of culturally prescribed constraints and crafting their own version of femininity. However, their agency was contextualized or limited by the social power relations that surrounded them.